The Beaver Dam High School football team is staying positive despite their season being pushed to the spring because of COVID-19. Last week the Beaver Dam School District announced that under the advice of local health officials they would flip high school football, girls volleyball, and boys soccer to the spring.
When the news came out that the health department was recommending completing four weeks of hybrid-in person learning before starting high contact sports, Beaver Dam head football coach Brock Linde said he initially had hoped to find a way to still play in the fall. He initially envisioned possibly being able to start practice on October 1st and get a four or five game season in during the fall sports window, but it didn’t’ work out. He says now they are just looking at figuring out a spring schedule as they move forward.
Linde adds that “We will have to roll with the punches. It’s a difficult situation for a lot of people worldwide so we are not in that unique of a situation.” He adds that they have accepted that their season is on hold and are now figuring out a plan moving forward and getting ready for March 8th.
With the season pushed to the spring, the current football season will be treated much like the summer where coaches are not allowed to have any contact with their team. He hopes the kids will be able to get into the weight room and adds that they are also free to work out on their own in small groups, like they would in the summer without any coach input. He adds that with the program only using three of their five allotted contact days this summer, so they will explore options to see if they can use the final two in any capacity.
One issue all school districts across the state who are moving football and boys soccer to the early spring is field conditions. Districts that do not have field turf available may be challenged to find useable fields to practice and play games on, depending on how hard of a winter we have. That may also impact the 2021 fall season if playing surfaces aren’t given enough time to recover after a spring season. Beaver Dam’s fields are natural grass and Linde says that this situation could open up discussions about field turf in our district.
When the spring season does get started on March 8th, Beaver Dam will most likely be scheduling games against the Dane County schools in the Badger Conference that have also postponed fall sports. He says that those schedules are already being worked on as we speak.
While they wait for spring coach Linde says they are just trying to keep the situation as positive as possible. “We can approach it in one of two ways as a program, we can feel bad and go into a shell and use this as a reason not to get better or the way that my staff and I want to approach it, and hopefully the kids and parents agree, “is let’s get after it!” He add “We’ve got a couple of months now to crush it in the weight room and become the best version of ourselves against some really really good competition coming up in the spring. I feel bad for everybody obviously, but we are going to make the most out of it and be ready to show what we are made of in the spring.”
Click the link to hear a full interview with Beaver Dam football coach Brock Linde
If you have a question about this story or have an idea for a future local sports story, please email Wade Bates at ddsports@goodkarmabrands.com
